Today in History

Today is Monday, April 7, the 97th day of 2014. There are 268 days left in the year.Today’s highlight:On April 7, 1922, the Teapot Dome scandal had its beginnings as Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall signed a secret deal to lease U.S. Navy petroleum reserves in Wyoming and California to his friends, oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, in exchange for cash gifts.On this date:In 1788, an expedition led by Gen. Rufus Putnam established a settlement at present-day Marietta, Ohio.In 1798, the Mississippi Territory was created by an act of Congress, with Natchez as the capital.In 1862, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.In 1927, the image and voice of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover were transmitted live from Washington to New York in the first successful long-distance demonstration of television.In 1939, Italy invaded Albania, which was annexed less than a week later.In 1949, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” opened on Broadway.In 1953, the U.N. General Assembly ratified Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden as the new secretary-general, succeeding Trygve Lie of Norway.In 1964, IBM introduced its System/360, the company’s first line of compatible mainframe computers that gave customers the option of upgrading from lower-cost models to more powerful ones.In 1966, the U.S. Navy recovered a hydrogen bomb that the U.S. Air Force had lost in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain following a B-52 crash.In 1978, President Jimmy Carter announced he was deferring development of the neutron bomb, a high-radiation weapon.In 1983, space shuttle astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson went on the first U.S. spacewalk in almost a decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly four hours.In 1984, the Census Bureau reported Los Angeles had overtaken Chicago as the nation’s “second city” in terms of population.Ten years ago: Mounir el-Motassadeq, convicted of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, was freed less than 2 1/2 years into a 15-year sentence after a court in Hamburg, Germany, ruled the evidence was too weak to hold him pending a retrial. (El-Motassadeq was convicted in 2006 of being a member of a terrorist group and an accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew on the four jetliners used in the attacks on New York and Washington; he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, the maximum penalty possible under German law.)Five years ago: President Barack Obama capped his eight-day European trip by addressing college students in Istanbul, Turkey; he then made an unannounced trip to Baghdad, where he visited with U.S. troops and Iraqi officials. Vermont became the fourth state (after Connecticut, Massachusetts and Iowa) to legalize same-sex marriage. Three members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with former Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana. Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a Lima court for death squad killings and kidnappings during his struggle against Shining Path insurgents. Connecticut routed Louisville 76-54 to capture its sixth women’s basketball title.One year ago: A fierce battle between U.S.-backed Afghan forces and Taliban militants in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan left nearly 20 people dead, including 11 Afghan children killed in an airstrike and an American civilian adviser. In Egypt, Christians angered by the killing of four Christians in sectarian violence clashed with a Muslim mob throwing rocks and firebombs, killing one and turning Cairo’s main Coptic cathedral into a battleground.Associated Press

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